


Stupid With Affection

by Jalules



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 01:16:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/805458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jalules/pseuds/Jalules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John’s hands might as well reach into Dave’s chest and give a little tug at his heart, because the boy has him feeling stupid with affection, falling all over himself just to get under those fingers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stupid With Affection

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a tumblr giveaway.

 

.

.

“Guess who,” John says.

He stands behind Dave, palms folded across his eyes, smudging the lenses of his shades with the trace oils on his skin. It’s more for the sake of being obnoxious than to flirt, but the sly intention is still there. He doesn’t disguise his voice, doesn’t even wait for an answer before breaking into laughter, letting his hands be held and pulled down, lowered to cover Dave’s mouth instead.

Dave smiles against John’s fingers, brushing his lips across them in a near-kiss. He breathes in the scent of his skin, holds that breath, smothers himself against the other’s palms for just a moment. Under those hands, closed in a space that consists only of John, Dave feels stupidly safe, feels lightheaded and happy.

And under all that, as he breathes out and tests the give of his own skin against the harder press of John’s fingers, he feels a little turned on.

He’s got a pretty obvious thing for hands, for John’s hands right now, and the guy knows it.

Everyone for the next two billion miles knows it, probably, from the way he stares when John redirects the breeze, when he wraps his fingers around the handle of a hammer, when he’s just turning up the volume with the tv remote. Every twitch of his fingers keeps Dave captivated, brings a hot flush of color to his face under the right circumstances.

Rose would pin it on his childhood, if he ever bothered to talk to her about it. But Dave has kind of figured out that much on his own, so he’s not about to open himself up for an afternoon of smirking and casual diagnosis.

He can recall, in vivid detail, early years spent studying his brother’s hands. Whether they were holding a sword or a game controller, Bro’s hand looked strong, looked skilled. Dave envied his coordination, admired the calluses across his fingers. He catalogued each detail of his brother’s hands onto the list in the back of his head, the one that says ‘stuff to try to live up to’ in big, bold letters.

Years of trying have him pretty convinced he can never really fill those gloves, but just working to reach that level has him appreciating his own skin, the particular flex of his own fingers.

Dave’s hands are nervous, light in every touch. They twitch in time with his rapid-fire speech, expressing more than his straight-set mouth and hidden eyes would ever allow. They become precise tools to strike, to grip a sword, to lay down or skip a beat, to press a shutter release.

He holds them close and precious, curls his fingers carefully around a stylus to draw, even more carefully around the warmth of John’s hand when there’s a quiet moment and they’re each too lazy to act like they don’t like that kind of thing.

His own hands are not _entirely_ unlike his brother’s, and he can appreciate that about them just as much as he can the differences.

John’s hands are something else.

John’s hands, when out of Dave’s hold, move twice as much as anyone else’s, in sweeping gestures, in distracted motions. He taps out the notes of songs stuck in his head on the surfaces of everything around him, seeking the elusive keys of a long lost piano.

 He waves his fingers in underwhelming displays of “magic,” points and laughs and throws them up in the air like some hack vaudeville clown, wiggling them close enough to Dave’s face to almost make him laugh.

He slips them up under Dave’s shirt to grab at his sides, tickling viciously, and then Dave _does_ laugh. The press of John’s fingers along his ribs leaves him gasping and wheezing, makes him an embarrassing mess as he goes red in the face, shouts death threats between the most mortifying snorts of laughter.

John’s hands do unholy things to him when no one’s looking. In covert closet meetings, in couch corners, under covers, Dave feels the full stretch of John’s fingers, tracing his lower lip, his collar bone. They slip into the tight space between hot skin and a cool, harsh zipper like that’s where they belong, and Dave isn’t about to suggest anything to the contrary.

John’s hands might as well reach into Dave’s chest and give a little tug at his heart, because the boy has him feeling stupid with affection, falling all over himself just to get under those fingers.

.

.

“Get on with it already, geeze,” John says.

His hands clutch a microphone, waiting for Karkat to pick a song he knows from any number of shitty romantic comedies so they can sing a friendly duet in this shitty game of late-night karaoke.

They’ve got friends on all sides, seated on couch cushions, sprawled across the floor, but Dave watches John handle the hunk of plastic like there isn’t another soul in the room.

He’s shifting it in his fingers, sliding his palm up the length of it, back down, and if he didn’t look so completely focused on the flicker of song choices across a screen, Dave would think he was doing it on purpose.

The way he passes his thumb over the top, tracing the crisscross pattern of the plastic there, makes Dave squirm in his seat, throw a quick glance to Rose across the way to see if she’s noticed.

And of course she has, over-observant pain in the ass that she is. She raises her eyebrows at him, all like, ‘ _nice handjob your boyfriend is giving that mic huh Dave?_ ’

Except she’s probably thinking it in bigger words and with at least five times more snark.

Dave frowns slightly, as if to say ‘ _I have no idea what you’re talking about and hey, keep your eyes to yourself, pervert._ ’

After a moment’s pause he adds a slight curl of the lip that’s intended to mean ‘ _Also he’s not my boyfriend_.’

Not officially.

She pouts, the response something akin to, ‘ _Dave stop, you are embarrassing yourself and everyone around you, admit that the man is your boyfriend already for christ’s sake._ ’

Or maybe he’s projecting.

Whatever.

He ignores the rest of her meaningful glances, focuses on John instead. He’s got a hot handful of phallic imagery, one he’s still turning over in his fingers in a way that makes Dave’s face feel suspiciously hot. He’s so absorbed in watching John hold a microphone, he hardly notices him trying to pass it off.

The mic is thrust in his direction and he can’t imagine why.

Dave almost reaches for it before he catches himself, looks at John like he’s lost his mind.

“What the hell are you giving it to me for?”

“Karkat won’t make up his mind. You should pick something and sing with him instead.”

“I don’t sing.”

“So rap.”

“Name one song in that piss poor selection that leaves an opening for me to burn this mother down.”

“Dude, I didn’t say it had to be good or whatever.” John grins, raises his eyebrows like there’s a punchline just seconds away, “Not that any of your raps are really good to begin with anyway.”

Dave opens his mouth to retort, shuts it quick because all his so-called friends are holding in laughter, except for Karkat, who looks equally offended. Though that could just as easily be anger over the game’s failure to include all the hits from _When In Rome_.

He snatches the microphone from John’s hand, feels something catch in his throat at the body heat left lingering on its surface, seeping slowly into his own cool palm.

He can practically feel Rose’s eyes on him, _knows_ John’s eyes are on him, mocking just a little as he goes tense.

“Fine.” He snaps, curls his fingers tighter around the mic, “ _Crazy In Love_. Karkat, you be Beyoncé.”

And John can laugh all he wants, but Karkat makes a surprisingly good Beyoncé.

.

.

“Go find me a pizza,” John says.

His arm is draped over Dave’s stomach, fingers plucking at the hem of his shirt, and he sounds close to sleep.

Sprawled on a bed together, they’re in that comfortable space between making out and passing out, and neither is keen on moving.

Dave doesn’t even open his eyes, “A whole pizza?”

“Yeah. A whole pizza. Go get me one.”

“Dude, no.”

“ _Ugh_ , why not?”

“You’re on top of me. Can’t get up.”

That’s total bullshit. It’s only John’s arm holding him down, and they both know it.

They also know that John doesn’t really expect a whole pizza though, so the two of them continue lounging.

John’s fingers smooth down the hem of Dave’s shirt, flattening each place they had previously rumpled up, occasionally skimming his skin in the process.

“Cut it out," Dave mutters, not because he’s really bothered, but because he wants an excuse to reach down and grab John’s hand.

John offers little resistance, making a dismissive noise and letting Dave’s fingers work between his own without a word.

Dave holds that hand captive, tracing his thumb from one knuckle to the next, giving the odd squeeze to press their palms as close as possible. He’s half-tempted to bring it up to his mouth to kiss each finger, but that’d be really embarrassingly lame and would probably just tempt him further to put those fingers in his mouth.

Which is a whole other ball of wax.

He keeps his hold on John’s hand firm, moving just the tips of his fingers against the other’s skin, and when John laughs and teases that he has ‘a serious problem,’ Dave just buries his face in a pillow and smiles.

He wants to blame John for making him into a giant dork, but in all honesty he’s pretty sure he was a giant dork all along.

He wriggles closer, across the bed, makes himself comfortable just inches from John’s ear. He whispers some of the stupid romancy bullshit he’s been thinking lately, the kind of stuff he stores in the back of his brain and chooses to reveal if and only if John isn’t going to make fun of him.

He rests his forehead against John’s shoulder, stopping and starting his speech with nerves and shallow breathing, sort of sleepy and still clinging to John’s hand when he drops phrases ten times more humiliating than a bunch of kinky sex talk.

And John doesn’t seem to mind that it has a flow, a cadence, as Dave keeps talking. He’s got his breath held, waiting out the flood of affection and information, and all the while he holds Dave’s hand tight, grounds them both with it.

When Dave finally shuts up, it’s only to let John kiss him.

He pushes Dave’s bangs back with his free hand, makes his heart beat double time, and tells him he’s a total loser.

He says it like an ‘I love you.”

.

.


End file.
